Light One Candle
by MissMelysse
Summary: Data muses on the way candles have been used in his relationship with Zoe. Sort of an interlude in Crush III: Sostenuto, but contains past, present, and future scenes. Oneshot. Crushverse.


**Light One Candle**

_(Past, Present, and Future Crush, no specific Stardates)_

_Light one candle for the Maccabee children  
With thanks that their light didn't die.  
And light one candle for the pain they endured  
When their right to exist was denied.  
Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice  
Justice and freedom demand  
And light one candle for the wisdom to know  
When then peacemaker's time is at hand.  
_

The first time Zoe had lit a candle for him, it was the thirty-first anniversary of his permanent activation – his 'birthday' in her vernacular – and she'd presented him with a yahrzeit candle, to commemorate the fact that the day was also the anniversary of his father's death. Dr. Soong had been ethnically Jewish, though Data had not, at that time, been certain whether his creator had practiced his faith.

Still, the tiny flame burning on the waxed cotton wick in the glass jar seemed to push away more than just the circle of darkness around its immediate vicinity. Staring into the flame with Zoe in his arms, Data could accept – if not entirely understand – that candlelight was different than any other source of illumination.

The flickering warmth before him seemed to reflect the warmth that had been steadily growing from a spark deep within his core programming into something more.

It would be months before Data would be able to identify that spark as desire, months more before he could say the words his partner so richly deserved – but thinking about it from the other side of those moments, having incorporated those… feelings… into his greater program, he knew the candle had been the trigger.

As to his fiancée, Data knew that she found real power in candlelight. She loved to set lit tapers on their dining table when their "date night" plans were limited to a special dinner in their quarters, or light candles in the bathroom while enjoying a luxurious soak in the tub he had arranged to be installed in their home.

As well, he recalled the way a lit candle had illuminated her face the previous Christmas Eve, when he had returned from a journey through time, and joined her for the holiday chapel service on the ship. Her clear mezzo-soprano had been gaining warmth since their relationship had blossomed, and he found that he preferred hearing it to most of the other singers in the room.

But it was the way her chestnut hair shone, the redder strands enhanced by the red/yellow/white flame, that was burned indelibly into Data's memory, and the way her eyes sparkled when those assembled had completed singing "Silent Night," and she'd slipped her hand into his had made him gasp slightly.

He had known _then_ that he wanted to see this woman in candlelight as often as possible.

_Light one candle for the strength that we need  
To never become our own foe.  
And light one candle for those who are suffering  
Pain we learn so long ago.  
Light one candle for all we believe in  
That anger not tear us apart.  
And light one candle to bind us together  
With peace as a song in our hearts. _

The second time Zoe had lit a candle for him, Data realized, was in the aftermath of their time with Lore on Planet Borg (as his fiancée referred to it) and the other android's death at his – no – _their_ hands. Zoe may not have pressed the button, but she had been in the room, and she insisted that she was an active participant, not merely a bystander.

She'd offered to do the deed for him, in fact, but he had refused to allow it, explaining that it was his duty to see his brother's evil deeds ended forever.

They had missed some of Christmas, all of Hanukkah, and worse, their traditional New Year's celebration – the holiday they'd claimed as _theirs _ – had been tainted by that experience, but the young woman he had pledged his future to had coped with it all with grace and bravery that astounded him.

"So many times, you've been my support, my anchor," she'd told him. "Now it's my turn to be those things for you."

In his altered state, his brain flooded with external emotions from the chip his brother had stolen, Data had not been in a position to argue, but after… afterward it had taken him more time than he had expected to find a new equilibrium.

He'd gone so far as to suggest that perhaps Zoe would be better served, life a safer life, if they were not a couple.

She had not been pleased. In fact, Data was quite certain that if he had been human, she would have punched him. (Her right hook really was the stuff of legends, at least according to his captain, who was also his fiancée's boxing coach.)

Zoe had stormed out to the barn, inviting Geordi to go on a ride in her ancient Ford truck, leaving Data to stew for an hour. Specifically, she'd told him that he had as long as it took for her to retrieve ice cream from her friend Caro's farm and return home to get his "planet-sized brain to function enough to withdraw his head from his shiny gold ass." (The final three words were a favorite descriptor, used by the human woman whenever he truly angered her.)

It had been slightly more than an hour, and she had returned in a flitter rather than the ground vehicle and announced, "Geordi made a friend; we're on our own tonight." Then she'd lit the candles on the tray in the living room and turned off the lights. "We have to talk," she told him. "And we have a better track record with conversations held in the dark."

They resolved a lot of the issues that Lore's activities – recent and less so – had brought up that night, and their relationship was stronger for it.

_What is the memory we value so highly  
That we keep it alive in that flame?  
What's the commitment to those who have died  
That we cry out, "They have not died in vain!"?  
We have come this far always believing  
That justice would somehow prevail.  
This is the burden, and this is the promise  
And this is why we will not fail. _

It was inevitable, Data knew, that at some point, he and Zoe would have opposing views on a political issue. True, they didn't always entirely agree on some minor things, but he had never expected that his young partner would be so vocal about something she was passionate about, when her view was in direct opposition to Starfleet's position.

He did not blame the Crusher boy for the incident, but he knew that the friendship the two shared was what had led to Zoe's participation in the protest against the forced relocation of the Northern American Indians of Dorvan Five.

It was, Data reflected, a complicated situation. Technically the group on Dorvan Five were a Federation colony, but their planet had been ceded to the Cardassians as part of an ongoing peace process, and that meant they were required to move.

The Indians refused, and sought entry into the Cardassian Union – after all, the planet in question had little use to the Federation; it was simply their home.

The Crusher boy, Wesley, already disaffected from Academy life and his expected future in Starfleet had been a vocal proponent of letting the Indians remain where they were, and Data was sure that he had been the one to call Zoe, who got her fellow students involved. (It was not incidental that there were three Dorvan Five students among her classmates at Yale that semester).

Seeing her on the newsfeeds at a candlelight vigil had jarred the android. Data had never participated in a political action so directly, and he could not explain to his fiancée that while Captain Picard, and he himself, were personally opposed to Starfleet's position, they had no choice but to act on orders, as it was not a time of war.

Rather, they were attempting to prevent a new war from breaking out.

It would be approximately three weeks before Data could really explain himself to her and understand Zoe's point of view. She had used her October Break to meet him on a starbase halfway between Earth and the section of the demilitarized zone the _Enterprise_ was then patrolling, then traveled together to Atrea Four to spend time with Julianna and Pran Tailor – his… parents - and she'd presented him with the burnt stub of the candle she'd held at the vigil.

"We're not always going to agree," she'd said, demonstrating how much wisdom she had gained since they had met, since they had fallen in in love. "I know I'm supposed to be a dutiful Starfleet partner, but I _can't_, not when it goes again my own beliefs."

"I would never ask you to," Data told her. "It has been suggested that I ask you to simply tone down your visibility in the future, but I find I cannot."

"It wasn't a direct order, then?" His inability to refused direct orders had caused concern for them before.

"It was not."

"Even when I disagree with Starfleet's position, I still support _you_," she said. "I always have; I always will."

Data had accepted that.

Later, upon arriving at his mother's house, they had found a lit candle standing in the center of a ring of seashells waiting in their room.

"It's Atrean tradition," Julianna explained, "to welcome guests with firelight. But it's too hot for a fire, so I used a candle. The shell ring is to honor Zoe… we've spoken of her love of the beach."

Zoe had reached out an embraced the older woman, and Data had found gratification in seeing her do so. The initial meeting between the two had not gone well, and he had been concerned that this visit would be uncomfortable.

_Don't let the light go out!  
It's lasted for so many years!  
Don't let the light go out!  
Let it shine through our hope and our tears._

Data walks into the Academy Chapel and is immediately struck by the numbers of candles. A New Year's Eve wedding calls for such things of course, especially one delayed by several months because of circumstance, but while he was instrumental in the planning, of this event, seeing it in "real time" is not the same.

Especially now that he has his emotion chip completely integrated into his programming. The chip, as he, Zoe, and Geordi had long surmised, did not actually provide emotion. Rather, it had given him the context to identify his own, unique, android expressions of emotions he already possessed.

The space to explore these feelings, the _encouragement _to do so, was just one of the things Zoe had gifted him with. Her support throughout the process was another. And now, tonight, they were giving one another the mutual gift of a lifetime commitment.

The unity candle waiting near the altar had been Zoe's idea. "We don't have to attribute religious meaning to it," she'd assured. "It's just a symbol of two lives becoming one."

"Our lives have been one for several years."

"Well, yes, but this is a ritual," she said.

And Data had completely understood.

The first time Zoe had lit a candle for him, it was the thirty-first anniversary of his permanent activation – his 'birthday' in her vernacular – and she'd presented him with a yahrzeit candle, to commemorate the fact that the day was also the anniversary of his father's death. But since that night, there had been many candles lit in their home, passed between them, used as rituals and burned just to drive away both metaphysical and literal darkness.

As Data turned and saw his white-clad bride walking down the aisle of the candlelit chapel, her mother and father flanking her, not to give her away, but to provide loving support as they watched their daughter embrace her own future, he smiled.

In her eyes, he glimpsed the reflection of candlelight, and he vowed that it would remain there eternally.

_Don't let the light go out!  
Don't let the light go out!  
Don't let the light go out!_

* * *

**Notes: **"Light One Candle" was written by Peter Yarrow. It's actually meant as a Hanukkah song, and in truth, I'm writing this on night three of Hanukkah, 2019, but I just wanted to muse on how candles are important to Data and Zoe, before I dive back into chapter 21 of _Crush III: Sostenuto. _ This contains minor spoilers for the future of the CrushVerse, and references to all of the existing CrushVerse, most particularly "Cake" and "Amazing."


End file.
